John: The Temple
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Exegetical Point: Fulfilling prophecy John shows that Jesus is the Christ is the zealous worshiper, the greater Temple and the knower of hearts.
Homiletic Point: Jesus enables us to come to God in worship, via his temple despite our hearts
Intro
Intro
Recap
John is laying out a bunch of evidence that Jesus is the Christ, so that believers can trust him and have eternal life. Every word!
Over the last few weeks we have followed the early days of Jesus earthly ministry. John skips over the story of Jesus’ birth and only starts telling the story when Jesus is an adult.
John the Baptist was the warm-up act, preparing people for Jesus. Then he proclaimed: Jesus id “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Jn 1:29. He testified, gave eyewitness evidence that Jesus was the promised messiah!
Then the first disciples started to see it too! Jesus was revealed to them as the Christ, and he started to display his power with a prophetic insight. He called himself Jacob's Ladder.
Then Jesus was revealed as messiah when he did his first “Sign” - he changed the water into wine at a wedding feast.
We’ve seen that Jesus’ identity is being seen by more and more people! He is being revealed as Messiah/Christ, King, Prophet and now today almost as a priest!
Three Truths about Jesus.
Three Truths about Jesus.
1. True Worship (v13-17)
1. True Worship (v13-17)
In the passage we’re looking at closely today, we see that Jesus knows and practices true worship.
Now last Sunday night and over the next couple Sunday nights we’re spending some time fleshing out what true worship looks like and how that shapes our Sunday gatherings. One of the things that is most obvious as you start to dive into the Bible is that God has a lot to say about worship!
You know why?
Because you and I have been designed for worship, and our worship drive has been corrupted. We need God to reveal himself to us, and we need him to teach us how to worship so that we can do it right!
Under the previous dispensation, the Old Covenant, God had laid out heaps and heap of instructions about how to worship, but as time wore on, people were going through the motions of worship but their hearts were far from God. They were checking boxes but not actually seeking the Lord.
Perhaps that is you here this morning?
When worship becomes mundane and heartless we want to innovate. We want to make it exciting. We want to make it convenient. We want to mess around with God’s design to see how far we can mangle it while still calling it “worship.”
The Jews of Jesus day were doing the same thing. Making things more convenient, letting people profit from the worship experience! But Jesus - the Son of God, was not impressed. He had been staying with his family in Capernaum, but then:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
Wow!
Jesus is scary! He is the friend of sinners, but he is scary! He’s a friend like an Islander. It’s a cliche I know, but your average islander mate is the friendliest bloke you’ll meet. Gentle and respectful. But man, you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, he’s tall and built solid. He could put you in your place real quick!
Jesus reveals a taste of the anger of God against sin and he puts them in their place. Jesus comes up to the temple to worship God, but instead of a place where God’s people can come to worship, be taught truth and meet with God, they are assaulted by the clamor of the market place!
This was a special time of year for the Jews, it was time to look back into their history and remember how God had delivered them from slavery. As they killed and ate a Passover lamb, they painted their doorways with blood and God’s wrathful angel of Death passed over their families, sparing them from God’s judgment.
Every year the Israelites were to re-enact this with a commemorative meal that reminded them of their history and fueled their thankful worship of God!
For this commemorative reenactment and for other temple ceremonies you needed animals like sheep and cows and doves. So you needed to bring your own animals to sacrifice in worship.
But here’s the thing. Not all of the Jews lived in Jerusalem where the temple was. They were spread out across their country, and, due to the dispersions, there were Jews across the Roman world, from Rome to Athens, to Antioch to Alexandria. People would be coming from all over the place to worship at the temple.
So lets imagine you live in Rome, and you need to sacrifice a sheep in Jerusalem. It a fair way to take a sheep!
Imagine if we had to go to our capital with livestock? You might consider trailering a sheep from here to Canberra, but what if you live in Broome? It’s a fair hike!
So many people would, instead of traveling with an animal, just bring money and buy their sacrificial animal once they arrived.
But who’s got time to traipse around Jerusalem looking for livestock when you get there?
Some folks saw this as an opportunity! A business opportunity! We don’t we make it super convenient and sell the animals right at the temple!
Like the snack bar at the movie theater, put it right outside so it’s super convinient, then hike up the prices!
On top of that, the temple wont accept roman of other foreign money, especially if it has pictures on it of other gods or roman emperors, so they had their own currency that you needed to use at the temple. That means if you came in fromout of town you’d have to change over your money, and pay a fee in the process!
All of this stuff was ok in principle - God doesn’t begrudge businessmen, or buying an animal to sacrifice and so on. But here’ the problem - they were commercializing the temple itself! They were taking the ordinary profane things and bringing them into the holy space!
Most scholars suspect that this was taking place in the outer courts of the temple. If you know your Jewish temple facts you would remember that the inner building, the temple itself was actually off limits to almost everybody. That was the place where God’s presence dwelt and only priests could go in there and only for certain reasons.
So people could meet around the temple, but only certain people could get close. It was limited so that Jewish men could be the closest, then Jewish women, and then anybody else could be in the outer courts such as gentiles (people who were not ethnically Jewish). This meant that the outer courts were essentially the only place where all God’s people could be together.
This was the place where the scripture could be taught and explained. This was the place where outsiders could come to hear about God and his wonderful deeds!
This was the closest place the converts to Judaism could get to God’s holy presence.
Yet,
in this place fro the worship of God and the building up of God’s people, there's a market. It is unloving to God, and unloving to the people trying to worship God!
And Jesus is angry.
He sees that God’s Holy home is being overrun by the profane.
He is passionate and zealous for his Father!
He sits down and ties a whip together.
Then he begins to cleanse the temple. He purges the courts!
He drives out the animals and overturns tables!
Jesus was fulfilling the prophesy of Malachi, given some few hundred years earlier:
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
In many respects, Jesus clears the temple so that worship can really take place! SO that worship will be made good and righteous. But, on a symbolic level, it reminds us that in order to truly worship God, we need Jesus to cleanse and prepare the way.
He did it in the lead-up to Passover where they would remember the rescue of God through the death of a lamb. It is as though Jesus was cleansing the temple in preparation of a death that would bring rescue.
We need Jesus to go before us and clear out all of the profane, rubble that encroaches on our spiritual lives so that we can worship God truly and fully!
What things are you metaphorically trying to bring with you into the temple of God?
It’s easy to look at big-box churches with cafes and bookshops in their foyer, or to prosperity preachers who are getting rich through churches and denounce them - but i want you to have a look and see if maybe there’s any logs in your own eye!
What are you trying to mix in with your faith for the sake of comfort an convenience?
Perhaps you only come to church when it’s convenient? When the worship of God does not interfere with your other engagements? Or you want low engagement church, where it takes least effort for you to be involved?
Perhaps you want a comfortable Christianity where we can have our earthly cake and give God the crumbs? You want to be like Solomon who put more effort into building his own Palace than building God’s temple?
Perhaps you are crowding out the faith of other people seeking God by filling your relationships and conversations with trivialities and trifles. They will never hear the Gospel preached to them because it is drowned out by a cacophony of politics and current affairs and corona-virus discussion...
Friends, when you see it, when you see how you’re encroaching the worshipful service of God with earthly rubble, ask jesus to help you. Ask him to cleanse you!
Jesus is zealous for God! Jesus is zealous for his fathers worship!
He shows how worthy God is by the way he acts!
Jesus is the truest worshiper. He has worshiped God full and faithfully with his whole life. He is our example of true worship, and the only way that we can worship God truly.
In fact, the Worship Book of the OT is itself the worship book of Jesus. The whole thing finds its fulfillment in Jesus! So many of the Psalms point to Jesus directly, or they are the words of Christ or at the very leaset Christ Jesus leading his people in worship.
And Jesus disciples would learn this. They would even remember a specific verse from Psalm 69:9 that Jesus fulfilled:
His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Jesus was passionate for the worship of God. He cleared out the profane activities and in doing so opened up the court for it’s true purpose.
When Christ cleanses us, we too are freed to fulfill our purpose as worshipers of God.
Jesus is the truest worshiper of God, and he enables us to come to God.
2. True Temple (v18-22)
2. True Temple (v18-22)
The religious leaders are understandably a bit taken aback.
What would you do if someone turned up to church and then just started changing everything?
Despite the fact that Jesus just filfilled Psalm 69:9 and Malachi 3 before their very eyes, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus for some evidence or signal that would prove that Jesus had the authority to be doing such things.
Jesus would give them one, but not the kind that they were expecting!
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”
Destroy the temple! The temple they were standing in had been under construction for 46 years, and would in fact keep being built for a couple decades after this event.
What a bold statement! They could not believe that it could be done. Yet, if they wanted some sign of divine power and authority, you could not ask for a greater one! God could rebuild that temple in that time, or even less!
But, as we know, Jesus was not referring to the temple building, but rather to his own body!
But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
Temples are places where god’s dwell. The temple of the Jews had been a real place where God’s presence really dwelt, but even that was a foreshadow of a greater temple - God incarnate and walking among us.
Jesus was God himself - His body was the true temple where God dwealt and met with his people!
Jesus was prophesying His death and resurrection, and it would be a sign that he had all the authority to be doing stuff like clearing the temple courts!
Do you see the pattern here between this and the wedding at Cana?
Purification jars to to overflowing wine, then Temple purification to his body resurrected.
On the Third day Jesus made water to wine, and now he prophesied that on the third day he would raise this body-temple!
This is the new messianic age being heralded in!
But the Jewish leaders didn’t understand this. The misunderstanding of prideful opponents is a recurring theme in John. From the beginning we were warned that Jesus came to his own, but his own did not receive him.
Will you recieve him? The disciples heard Jesus words, saw what happened to Jesus and they saw the scripture fulfilled before their eyes!
They believed!
Death, burial & resurrection.
Jesus rose from the dead - his temple raised - and in doing so he also ensured he would live among us forever. Jesus would dwell with his people in in his people. We too are God’s temple! When we are filled with God’s Holy Spirit we are the dwelling place of GOd. We are collectively, as the church being built into a temple that far exceeds Herod’s temple or Solomons before it!
Jesus is the truest worshiper of God, and he enables us to come to God.
Jesus is the true temple and he enables us to come to God.
3. True Knowledge (v23-25)
3. True Knowledge (v23-25)
While in Jerusalem, after this incident jesus did other signs and miracles.
Many signs (as John admits), but John only shares the ones that are pertinent to his intention.
Nevertheless John mentions these other unnamed signs here because people are staring to beleive in Jesus. More and more people are begining to see Jesus as the messiah!
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.
SO, people were seeing Jesus’s signs and responding to him in faith. On the surface that seems great, but it this trusting seems to be shallow. It was not reciprocated.
People were trusting Jesus, but that trust was not returned. Why? Because Jesus knew their hearts.
We need the evidences to help us see and trust Jesus, because we’re limited. We need signs and eyewitness testimony, But Jesus see into our heart and knows truly what is going on there. He needs no letters of introduction or referees.
He can see right into our hearts. And he can see that some of the people who were following it had only a shallow faith, like seed planted in shallow soil.
Later on in John we will come to an incident where many of Jesus disciples turn away from following him because of the things Jesus says. They can’t stomach the hard teaching and they ditch Jesus. Their faith was not true faith. They saw the signs that Jesus did, but they didn’t really know him. And Jesus could see that.
What would he see in your heart today?
Jesus can see your heart. What would he see there?
We’re totally depraved (radically corrupted, not completely corrupted)
You can’t hide your heart from Jesus. You deserve the wrath, the whip, to be driven out of God’s presence.
We can’t have true faith, and true knowledge of Jesus unless HS enables u to take hold of Jesus.
Throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus Christ!
Ask him to cleanse you! Ask him to reveal himself to you as redeemer and friend.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Jesus is the truest worshiper of God, and he enables us to come to God.
Jesus is the true temple and he enables us to come to God.
Jesus knows our hearts, yet he enables us to come to God.
References:
Carson’s Pillar Commentary on John.
Hutcheson’s commentary on John
Hendrickson’s commentary on John
Sermons on by Richard D. Philips,
Sproul, R. C., ed. The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version. Orlando, FL; Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005.
Phillips, Richard D. John. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. 1st ed. Vol. 1 & 2 of Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2014.